Imagine a single drug that could prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, treat patients who have already contracted HIV, and even remove all the dormant copies of the virus from those with the ...

Although our chromosomes are relatively stable within our lifetimes, the genetic material found in our mitochondria is highly variable across individuals and may impact upon human health, say researchers ...

Humans don't like being alone, and their genes are no different. Together we are stronger, and the two versions of a gene – one from each parent – need each other. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute ...

(Medical Xpress)—Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have presented a new principle for fighting bacterial infections, in other words, a new type of antibiotic, in the FASEB Journal. The new antibiotic mechan ...

A team of University of California, Riverside researchers have developed a novel transparent skull implant that literally provides a "window to the brain", which they hope will eventually open new treatment ...

Sleep increases the reproduction of the cells that go on to form the insulating material on nerve cell projections in the brain and spinal cord known as myelin, according to an animal study published in the ...

There's now overwhelming evidence that a child's future health is influenced by more than just their parents' genetic material, and that children born of unhealthy parents will already be pre-programmed for ...

Scientists from Harvard Medical School and the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India, provide evidence that modern-day India is the result of recent population mixture among divergent ...

Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) led by Carmela Abraham, PhD, professor of biochemistry, along with Cidi Chen, PhD, and other collaborators, report that the protein Klotho plays an important role ...

First on top of the world and then in the depths of despair – this is what the extreme mood changes for people with bipolar disorder are like. Under the direction of scientists from the University of Bonn ...

A new study is helping to rewrite Ebola's family history. The research shows that filoviruses—a family to which Ebola and its similarly lethal relative, Marburg, belong—are at least 16-23 million years ...

A genetic phenomenon that allows for the selection of multiple genetic mutations that all lead to a similar outcome—for instance the ability to digest milk—has been characterised for the first time in ...

A multidisciplinary team of scientists from Spanish universities and research centres, among which is the University of Valencia, has managed to design small synthetic molecules capable of joining to the ...

Scientists at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have identified a key factor that regulates the autophagy process, a kind of cleansing mechanism for cells in which waste material and cellular debris ...

Material

Material is synonymous with Substance, and is anything made of matter - hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term Material is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties which are used as inputs to production or manufacturing. In this sense, materials are the pieces required to make something else, from buildings and art to stars and computers.

A material can be anything: a finished product in its own right or an unprocessed raw material. Raw materials are first extracted or harvested from the earth and divided into a form that can be easily transported and stored, then processed to produce semi-finished materials. These can be input into a new cycle of production and finishing processes to create finished materials, ready for distribution, construction, and consumption.

An example of a raw material is cotton, which is harvested from plants, and can then be processed into thread (also considered a raw material), which can then be woven into cloth, a semi-finished material. Cutting and sewing the fabric turns it into a garment, which is a finished material. Steelmaking is another example—raw materials in the form of ore are mined, refined and processed into steel, a semi-finished material. Steel is then used as an input in many other industries to make finished products.